Contents

Maxima is based on a 1982 version of Macsyma, which was developed at MIT with funding from the United States Department of Energy and other government agencies. A version of Macsyma was maintained by Bill Schelter from 1982 until his death in 2001. In 1998, Schelter obtained permission from the Department of Energy to release his version under the GPL. That version, now called Maxima, is maintained by an independent group of users and developers. Maxima does not include any of the many modifications and enhancements made to the commercial version of Macsyma during 1982–1999. Though the core functionality remains similar, code depending on these enhancements may not work on Maxima, and bugs which were fixed in Macsyma may still be present in Maxima, and vice versa.

Maxima includes a complete programming language with ALGOL-like syntax but Lisp-like semantics. It is written in Common Lisp, and can be accessed programmatically and extended, as the underlying Lisp can be called from Maxima. It uses Gnuplot for drawing.

For calculations which use floating point and arrays heavily, Maxima offers the possibility of generating code in other programming languages (notably Fortran) which may execute more efficiently.

Maxima is a general-purpose system, and special-case calculations such as factorization of large numbers, manipulation of extremely large polynomials, etc. are sometimes better done in specialized systems.

The GNUTeXmacs and LyX mathematical editor programs can be used to provide an interactive GUI for Maxima, as can Sage. Other options include the Imaxima front end, as well as an Emacs and Xemacs interaction mode which is activated by Imaxima.